


Matches

by PreludeInZ



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashfire - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, Matches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: Just a little piece of First, Do No Harm's universe, but it can be read in a standalone fashion. Scout/Pyro, comfort after trauma.





	Matches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pemm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/gifts).



He woke to the smell of sulfurous wood smoke and a sputtering flare in the dark. Pyro. Just sitting across the end of the bed, leaning against the wall. Pyro could hold a match until it was nearly burnt all the way down, kissing up against the callouses on his fingertips, and he did so. Shadows darkened the hollows of his face, beneath his jaw, his cheekbones, his eyes, and he cradled the little creature of heat and light in his palm until it gave up the ghost, a tendril of pale white smoke leaving his hands. It seemed darker still when the little light died, the afterimage of it burned at the backs of his eyes, made him realize his head ached. Everything sort of did, but that was nothing new.

Scout wasn’t sure where they were. He had the vague idea that it was still the middle of the week, but the quiet and the dark threw him off. He remembered the flare of sunlight off the window in the back of Engie’s truck, climbing in and settling down next to—someone. Pyro, he hoped, but past that point it all faded into nothing. And he was waking up and didn’t know from what, so the where and the when and the what had happened were really pretty far beyond him.

Nothing new.

Another match. It still hurt Scout’s eyes, but he wasn’t about to say anything. Scout remembered about the matches, a little. He groaned faintly, in spite of himself, rubbed his eyes and rolled over, curling up and knowing deep down that he wasn’t going back to sleep.

It had been a dumb present, a dumb idea. Matches for the pyromaniac, Scout had just thought it might cheer him up, five hundred strike anywhere matches. It wasn’t like they did much that was fun, these days. When your hobbies had been burned away to “recovering from surgery”, fun became a bit of a foreign concept. Another rasping scrape of a match head against sandpaper, another flare of light. And then a hand rubbing over his shoulders, smoothing over the winkles of the t-shirt he’d slept in, and pressing warm against the back of his neck. Scout hadn’t realized he was cold until he shivered against the warmth of Pyro’s palms.

“Hey. You back?” Pyro asked gently, and his grip tightened slightly, just slightly. Enough to be warm, familiar pressure, instead of cold, clinical restraint. “Scout? Hey, you with me?”

“Mm. Y-yes. Yeah. ‘m here.” For as much as that counted, these days. Wherever “here” was. Scout wished he hadn’t answered, just stayed quiet. He hated how weak his voice sounded, how hard it was to get a thought from his brain to his mouth, and have it remain intact the whole way there. “Wh-where…we…where’re we? …s’dark. Wh-why…”

Pyro’s hands again, rubbing his back, finding the places that were sore and tense and—god, what was happening, he didn’t—

“—listening? Hey. It’s our room. It’s just our room, it’s dark because it’s nearly midnight." Pyro again. Pyro, thank god for Pyro. Pyro always knew what had happened. Was happening.

”…our room where?“

A pause that was maybe slightly longer than necessary, and which made his stomach feel knotted and sour. "Teufort. We’re back home.”

This wasn’t home. “A-am…am I okay?”

“You’re all right,” Pyro assured him. “You’re all right, Scout, it’s the weekend. It’s okay if you don’t remember. You slept a while. Do you remember the drive down from Sawmill?”

Oh, Jesus. The back of Engie’s truck was still the nearest point he had for reference, had that been it? When was that? The flare of sunlight off the back window, and sitting down next to hopefully-Pyro, and— “…Friday?”

“That was Thursday.”

“O-oh.” The weekend. Scout didn’t remember getting as far as the weekend. He remembered getting as far as Thursday, apparently, though he’d thought it was Friday. He still wasn’t sure what today was. Saturday, hopefully. It would kill him to have lost Friday _and_  Saturday. Nearly midnight, fuck. _Fuck_. “I dunno. F-fuck. No, just…fuck, I ain’t sure. S’just I been sleeping? H-how long? O-oh god. Oh god, oh no. What’d he do? Pyro? I don’t remember, I d-don’t…I. I—”

“Nothing. Scout, it was nothing. Don’t be scared, you’re safe. I’m here, you’re okay. All right? Do you want me to turn the light on?”

 _No_. No no _no._ “N-nah. Don’t. Please, don’t, j-just…I just…hhn.”

Something in his brain seemed to skip, seemed to blip itself forward to a moment he wasn’t expecting. Pyro’s arms were curled around him, now, the warmth of him pressed firmly against Scout’s back. He was trying to shrink into his partner’s arms, clinging to Pyro’s hands, pressing them tightly against his chest. His breathing had gotten ragged, catching on the edges of sobbing panicky gasps, but even these seemed to be diminishing.

Pyro was still talking. “Hey. Hey, shh, shh. You were just really tired. That’s all it was. No one did anything, you’re okay. You’ve been really tired, we had a really long week, and you needed some sleep. That’s all. You were up for a really long time, like two days straight, and you’re tired. You’re still tired, but it’s okay. It’s Saturday. It’s still Saturday, and we’ve got time.”

“W-wish I’d just stayed asleep,” Scout mumbled, heaving a shuddering breath. “Jesus. Oh, Jesus, ‘m just s-so fucked up. I can’t remember anything, an’ _shit_ it’s just that’s so fuckin’ scary. Did…d’you have matches? Did I dream that?”

Pyro tightened his arms around Scout’s torso. “You remember about the matches? You gave me that box ages ago. You don’t usually catch me with them.”

Scout shut his eyes again and shuddered. God, he was tired. That wasn’t fair, he couldn’t even remember why. And for some reason he was hung up on the stupid matches. “God. Fuckin’…just…matches. That’s just so fuckin’ dumb, I’m fucking stupid, you know. W-with matches. An’ you. What the fuck you even need with matches, got a big goddamn flame thrower, like a dozen lighters in your pockets. God.”

Behind him, Pyro’s weight shifted, he sat up. His tone softened further. “I love matches.”

“Y'don’t gotta…”

Pyro laughed, quietly. Improbably cheerful in the dark as he reached down and brushed his fingers through Scout’s hair. “Baby, the only thing you could think that would be fucking stupid is that there’s even the remotest possibility that I _wouldn’t_ love matches. Nobody had ever given me a box of matches before you did, did you know that? I should have told you." He reached over, picked up the box and flicked it open. "These are lovely, too. Really good quality. Do you remember where you got them?”

Of course not. Scout laughed weakly, because he didn’t still didn’t remember where he was or how he’d gotten there. “Fuck no, shit. S'just some dumb box of matches, Pyro. Shit. Uh, Coldfront. Maybe?”

“That would make sense. That little general store in town? Oh, man. Oh, we should go sometime, I bet they have a _lot_  of great fire gear. All that cold weather camping stuff. Axes. A _hatchet_. I want a new axe. That’s a hint, for my birthday.”

“I don’t know from axes. What’s a hatchet?”

Pyro laughed and pulled out a match, spun it between his fingers. “Dumbfuck city boy.” But he said it affectionately, and Scout grinned a little. 

“Ain’t my fault you’re a goddamn hick.”   

“Point. C'mon, didn’t you play with matches when you were little?”

“I dunno. I don’t remember, matches. Lighters an’ shit, maybe. Couple of my brothers smoked. Not me. Gabe caught me at it once, kicked the _crap_ outta me. Says it’s a filthy goddamn habit, an’ he gave the others shit too, s'just I was the only one Gabe could beat it out of. Guess I’m glad he did. I don’t know about matches. Match heads in tennis balls, I guess. That was Lyle, y'know, brother in between me an’ Gabe. He ain’t a pyromaniac, though, s'just a regular maniac.” Scout still had scars from that, and it had taken a long time to forget the smell of burning rubber and nylon.

“Amateur hour. Thoroughly unsubtle." And he flicked the head of the match with his thumb, expertly setting it alight. By now Scout’s eyes had adjusted and it didn’t hurt quite as bad to watch the little flame. Pyro’s tone had gotten thoughtful, introspective. "We’ve never talked about fire, you and me." 

Scout knew that, and had never been sure he really wanted to. The only time Pyro had ever really tried to explain it, he’d simplified it down to "the way you feel about baseball, only times about a million and also more likely to kill me.” But Pyro had always feigned polite interest in baseball, and it had never occurred to Scout to even try to return the favour. “Naw, I mean, no. It’s…well. Always seemed like somethin’ y'kinda wanted t'keep to yourself, maybe. That’s maybe just me makin’ a shitty excuse, though. I dunno. I’m kinda the worst, I guess.”

“You’re not the worst. I know you don’t really get it, and I know I’ve scared you a couple times. I mean, I started a forest fire and killed myself and if it hadn’t been for respawn I’d be dead. You were right to be scared. I know that was bad, and I should have had a better handle on things, but there was a lot stressing me out, and–well. We don’t need to talk about that. Matches, though. You never played with matches? _Really_  played with matches? Matches are sexy as hell.”

He’d lit a second one off the first, flicked his wrist to extinguish it, and then with a practiced motion, sent a pearl of flame from the first coiling down the rising thread of smoke, relighting the matchstick. Scout blinked at this.

“…how the fuck…? Pyro. Don’t fuck around with magic tricks, that shit freaks me out even when I got my head on straight. What the fuck, man. Goddamn witchcraft.”

Pyro looked up and beamed, teeth flashing white in the darkness. “You can’t tell me you’ve never seen that. Oh my god. Oh, you haven’t seen _anything_ yet _.”_ He pulled another match out of the box and pressed his thumb against the head of it. Then he lifted it to his lips, and caught it against the underside of his teeth. Another practiced motion, and it seemed like he’d spat another burst of flame into his fingertips, red-gold light glinting in his pale blue eyes. He cradled it gently in his palm, undaunted by the heat of it against his skin. “I can light a good match off just about anything,” he said softly.

“…yeah?” The way the light of it caught the lines of Pyro’s face, made him look strong and stern in the dark. God, he was handsome, and Scout couldn’t help thinking about how terrible he probably looked by comparison, how he’d gotten out of the habit of looking in the mirror, because it made him feel sick inside. How his face had gotten gaunt and his eyes had hollowed, perpetual smudges of dark bruising beneath them. Nothing like Pyro. Scout pushed himself up slightly, blew the match out, suddenly wanting not to be looked at.

Pyro laughed in the dark, and Scout felt him shift his weight on the bed. “I’ve got another few hundred,” he murmured, and there was the slight pressure of his knee against Scout’s hip, and then the creak of the springs beside him as Pyro stretched out on his side, leaning on his elbow. There was another match in his free hand, and this was suddenly tracing down the back of his arm, over his wrist, his knuckles, and then catching with a flare on the roughness of the cloth that still bound his hands. Pyro held the match in the space between them for a moment, licked his lips and lifted his eyes. “Go on. Go on, blow it out. I dare you. I have more and I love lighting them.”

The scent of smoke again. Pyro’s hand finding his hip, the waistband of the jeans he shouldn’t have slept in, the scrape of another match over the zipper, sending a jolt of some warm, vaguely disorienting sensation right through the heart of him. And then something that had never happened in the four years they’d known each other, for just a moment, Scout thought he might have understood something. About matches, and fire, and Pyro.

Pyro blew the match out, this time, and flicked it over his shoulder. There was the sound of a tiny impact of the matchstick on the bare wooden floor, as his hands slipped beneath the hem of Scout’s t-shirt, and the matches were forgotten.


End file.
